


if the world could stop

by melonews



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Character Study, Exposition, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 11:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27969779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melonews/pseuds/melonews
Summary: A prince is born. It smells like fire and ash.A son is born. It smells like ice and love.A monk–an airbender–the next Avatar–aboyis born. It smells like change.(a worldbuilding/universe study, of sorts)
Kudos: 14





	if the world could stop

**Author's Note:**

> 201208
> 
> so this has been sitting in my drafts for so long and i don't know what to do with it. i like what i have but i can't finish it and i don't have a wip i can incorporate it into without ruining what i have so i'm just posting as is. maybe i'll come back and finish it one day (as a canon rewrite) but for now it's just worldbuilding and a study of the atla universe.  
> hope u guys like it! it's my favorite style of my writing so far tbh

One year, there is the birth of a boy. He’s brought into the world with the cries of his mother filling the room, the deafening absence of his father, and a cold seeping in that feels like hell. 

A year later, another boy is born. He’s brought into the world with the cries of his mother filling the tent, the overbearing presence of his father and his father’s best friend and his mother’s best friend and his father’s mother and an entire tribe waiting anxiously just beyond the flap, and a cold filling the air that feels like home. 

(Ninety-five years before the first, a boy is born. He’s brought into the world quietly but the world centers around him, for him. He’s greeted by monks and he never grows his hair. There’s cold from the clouds surrounding them and it feels like change.) 

***

If you were to inquire about the latest gossip surrounding the Southern Water Tribe, there would be no response. The chief’s daughter becoming the sole waterbender left is buried deep in the tribe’s secrets, and everything else is perfectly ordinary. Only–that can’t be right, can it? Because you just heard from a shifty outpost near Kyoshi Island that there were sparks of blue coming from their igloos not too long ago. But that’s nonsense! Simply preposterous! The normality of the Southern Water Tribe is as sure as the fact that there is no war in Ba Sing Se. 

If, and this is all hypothetical mind you, you were to inquire this, you would not get a satisfactory reply and would have wasted your lunch break debating something that just does not happen. Abnormalities? In the Southern Water Tribe? Please. 

But the Kyoshi intel from the outpost assures you and the vegetable stand cashier assures you and everybody assures you that something–no, nothing!–is happening in the Southern Water Tribe. 

It all quickly becomes rather annoying to you and you dismiss the vegetable stand cashier with 5% tip instead of 10%, and you hurry back to work before your headache can increase exponentially. Of all the things you could’ve been doing and you foolishly wasted your time on a nation that is, in your modest opinion, quite boring. If no one can agree on what’s happening, then someone must be making up lies somewhere down the line, and that must mean that things in that nation have gotten so boring to the point of blatant lies! 

No, you assure yourself, nothing is happening in the Southern Water Tribe, or nothing of interest at least. Of _course_ there’s sparks of blue! It’s in the middle of the ocean entirely on ice! If there wasn’t blue anything, then there would be a reason to gossip. 

But this is all based on a hypothetical, of course. 

***

On the island of Kyoshi, there is a group of warriors. They are led by Suki and they work together with a strong enough bond that they all share a connection. Where one pushes, another one pulls; one dodges, another one strikes. Hand over hand, one of them will always assure the victory. 

Not that, Suki kicks a rock, there is much victory to win around here anyhow. They stay out of the war and they stay out of Ba Sing Se and they survive. There is no reason to worry, no reason to panic, because nothing is happening–to them, at least. A worldwide hundred year war tends to grate on the nerves, but that is how everyone lives. 

The fire nation does not attack their island, and any ill-wishers are taken down swiftly and quietly. The girls are restless, Suki is too, but they stay. Kyoshi Island has gone this long without inference in the war and Suki intends to keep it that way. What matters is her girls and her island; the rest do not fit. 

But they train and train and train, for what else would the title of “warriors” be for? 

They train and nothing happens. 

(There is word of unusual lights coming from the direction of the Southern Water Tribe. But there is word that this aforementioned statement is not true.) 

They train and nothing happens. 

(Sometimes Suki sits at the edge of the island, facing south. Sometimes she looks and looks and looks. Sometimes she believes she sees the lights that old coot was talking about.) 

They train and nothing happens. 

(Suki stands guard as the village children make a sand-town and destroy it within ten seconds of creation. The girls are in the center of town, centering their chi. Nothing is happening.) 

They train and–

Something happens. 


End file.
